I was born in Toronto, went to school in Toronto, got married in Toronto, had a baby in Toronto, and in spring 2024, almost forty years later, I will leave Toronto. I never really thought I would leave. I loved Toronto the way that you love something out of your childhood that probably didn't deserve it. But to this day I can watch movies like Patricia Rozema's When Night Is Falling (1995), or Egoyan's movies or Cronenberg's, or for God's sake even something like TekWar, and feel intense tenderness for the city where I grew up. But I noticed something starting to change in the late 2010s, a change that accelerated during the pandemic. The systemic metastasization of shoddily built glass condo towers. The rapacity of those buying up the units not to house themselves or their families, but as "investments," rubbing their hands together as they realized that no rent was too high for the desperate. Side-streets of modest bungalows that had housed working immigrant families as recently as 20 years ago, now transmuted into mere “real estate,” closed off to anyone but millionaires. The grinding down of public works and spaces, the underfunding or defunding of supports for the poor and afflicted, the crowding out of places for community, culture, love. That same old story. I'm sure you could say it about most cities these days. But this one was mine.

These little pieces for guitar date from as early as 2008 through to within the last few weeks. The earliest of them were recorded in one of those little bungalows on one of those side streets -- others in a series of apartments, including one in one of those glass towers. For all their technical weakness and naivety, they express the love that I will always feel toward Toronto. But they are a farewell.

GRANT: A simple blues riff, named for Grant Green, my favorite guitarist. I first jotted the theme down in August 2019, but this take is a new recording, from January 2024.

ONE FOR JAY: A theme for my dear friend Jay Rajiva, whose guitar artistry, magisterial scholarship, and gigantic heart inspire me to do the best I can. It was Jay who inspired me to get back into guitar after grad school (for several years I had been playing mostly mandolin), and Jay who encouraged me to share my playing. This recording dates to June 2020, and spun out of some lovely bossa-type playing he had shared at the time. This version has a twelve-string lead part; a version with a 6-string lead was also attempted at the session; and I've included that earlier take ("One More for Jay") with the download version as a bonus track. The tracks sat on the shelf until February 2024, when I added the bass to both versions, and prepared the mixes.

FOR CHARLES GAYLE, WHO SO LOVED THE WORLD (A CHANGE OF SEASONS): I was filled with grief when I learned of the passing of Charles Gayle, the man whom I considered the world's greatest living jazz musician, in September 2023. His final album, 2019's SEASONS CHANGING, seems to me to articulate some urgent and encompassing truths about our way of life today, and during the first year of the pandemic I listened to it almost every day. I only met Charles once, in 2018: on the day I met him, he hugged me, pressed his head against mine, and told me I should be "out there" playing in clubs. (It should be said that he never heard my playing; if he had, he might not have been so sure.) He was a great artist and a wonderful human being. The day we lost him, I picked up the mandolin I played at my wedding, and strummed how I felt, interspersed with some figures I couldn't help but borrow from him. I added the bass a few months later (I was thinking of The Verve's "Life's an Ocean" for some reason), in February 2024.

I'VE GOT A CRUSH ON YOU: A charming Gershwin Brothers tune from the late '20s, this has long been one of my favorite songs, particularly the rendition by Zoot Sims from 1975. The acoustic guitar and vocal at the center of this track were the first piece of music that Jay coaxed out of me, in May 2018. I added the bass and electric guitar in February 2024. A video of the original, unedited acoustic performance is included with the Bandcamp download version as an additional bonus.

NAOMI: A tune for my daughter, this was recorded over the Christmas break in 2020, when the world was in the grip of the pandemic and she was still in the planning stages. She is the city's greatest gift to me. Someday I want to write a song that captures some fraction of her marvelous sense of humor, joy, and style.

A CARSTEN MEINERT NECKSTRAP FOR CHANUKAH: This began life as a crude bass vamp (actually played on a disused old family cello) recorded in Winnipeg over the 2023 Christmas break. As I played the vamp, I was thinking of Carsten Meinert, but I didn't have a melody yet. That came in Toronto the following month. Carsten Meinert was a Danish saxophonist who self-released two albums in the late 1960s, played in funk bands in the '70s, and subsequently devoted himself to teaching. For many years, he was best known outside of Denmark for having developed a particular type of saxophone strap that was known for looking elegant and being easy on the player and the instrument. The belated reissue of his debut album, TO YOU, by Andreas Vingaard's Frederiksberg Records in 2015 revealed to the world an artist with a titanic personal sound and an ecstatic collective postbop concept. A subsequent reissue of his follow-up album, CM MUSICTRAIN, showed him adapting these ideas to the first flashes of European jazz-rock. Meinert's records are some of my favorites by anyone. He died in April 2021.

JIM and SOSUA: The guitar tracks for these two pieces were recorded (in one take each) at the same impromptu session in the summer of 2019. Originally untitled, they were retrospectively named for the Jim Hall (my first inspiration in jazz guitar) and for a Dominican beach town notable for its Jewish history that we visited in early 2020, just before the pandemic made such travel unthinkable. In the rush to get ready for the trip, the only music I remembered to bring with me was a Zoot Sims album and a Beach Boys album. Bass was added, and final mixes done, in early 2024.

BIRTHDAY BLUES (12 FOR CHARLES): I tried recording this blues at least 4 different times (on 4 different guitars!) during 2021 and 2022. The twelve-string parts here are from one of the earlier takes, in May 2021. 3 years later, I found myself redoing the lead part and adding some other elements on what, coincidentally, would have been Charles Gayle's 85th birthday -- February 28th, 2024. And the tune does bring something about Charles to mind for me: late in his career, he sometimes surprised audiences by playing a "down home" 12-bar blues at the piano, and he would holler on it too!

THE SQUIRREL/WHAT I'D BE WITHOUT YOU: These two pieces were originally recorded in 2008-9 on the then-new acoustic guitar I bought myself to celebrate getting through my first year of grad school. Other recordings made around this time included covers of songs by Love and Dillard & Clark, and this might give a sense of the context for "The Squirrel." Bass was added, and a final mix and edit completed, in January 2024.

TWO IMPROMPTUS FOR JENNIFER, ALWAYS: I met my wife in the spring of 2008. It took a couple of years for us to get together, but these two pieces (the earliest in this collection) were both recorded that same spring and summer in my first year in grad school, on the only guitar I had at the time, a particle board "El Degas" Strat copy that she has since painted with a beautiful Dominican scene. I emailed both tracks to a few friends at the time, the first music I had shared with anyone since I was a teenager. (The original mix of part 2 climaxed with a blaring melodica "horn section" -- mercifully excised here.) Thus, these two "impromptus" (as they were always titled) represented a cautious first step towards "going public" with my guitar playing. It would take another decade before I pressed the issue. I added the bass parts in February 2024, almost 16 years later -- 13 1/2 and counting for Jenny and me.

COME SUNDAY/I CAN'T GET STARTED: Recorded in July 2018 on my then-new Hofner guitar -- my first new electric guitar in almost 20 years -- this short clip combines part of Ellington's hymn with the familiar Vernon Duke/Ira Gershwin standard, in a naive attempt at a "folk surf jazz" kind of style.. I've played this arrangement many times over the years, and as recently as last October was croaking it through a bout of post-COVID asthma, but in compiling this album, I've returned to this first version from just a few days after I met Charles Gayle -- "I Can't Get Started" was one of his favorite songs. The bass was added six years later, in March 2024.

DEEP RIVER: One last memory of Charles Gayle. Gayle's musical career prior to his 1980s "rediscovery" is not well documented. One thing that is known, though, is that he taught jazz at a college in his hometown of Buffalo in the 1970s. During that time, he led a concert tribute to John Coltrane, at which the orchestra apparently performed this famous African-American spiritual. This take, closely based on Grant Green's outtake version from 1963, is (mostly) a different performance than the one that appeared on last year's THE BECHET CENTURY.

BONUS MATERIAL WITH DOWNLOAD VERSION:

In addition to the aforementioned "One More for Jay," the Bandcamp download version adds an entire extra album's worth (around 40 minutes) of bonus audio. These 13 extra tunes, previously released on Bandcamp on a limited basis in 2022, were recorded concurrently with the material in the main album program, between 2018 and 2021. Mostly, they consist of solo guitar performances of familiar jazz material (e.g. "Autumn Leaves," "You Are Too Beautiful," "All the Things You Are," "Someone to Watch Over Me," and the like), with a few surprises. These are presented mostly without overdubs or editing, in a "documentary" spirit.

Along the same lines, the download version also adds two video files: the original acoustic performance (warts and all) of "I've Got a Crush on You," and the original performance of "Come Sunday/I Can't Get Started," both from 2018. These are, for me, a nice memory of the little midtown Toronto apartment where my wife and I lived for most of the 2010s. When we moved out, the landlord sold it for a nice profit.

Toronto, Spring 2024